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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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What are some things you wish you had known when switching to Linux? (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I start: the most important thing is not the desktop, it's the package manager.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's pretty important on Windows too, though. Always “eject” or “safely remove hardware” before unplugging!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not in Windows 10/11. You can still "eject" if it makes you feel better, but it's basically redundant. They reworked the support for removable media so they are always ready to remove except during active read/write operations.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Read/write operations can happen in the background at any moment as long as the drive is mounted, so that's not terribly comforting.

Anyway, Windows has always avoided deferring writes on removable media, for as long as it's been capable of deferring writes at all. That's not new in Windows 10.

Linux has a mount option, sync, to do the same thing. Dunno if any desktop environments actually use it, but they could. Besides being slower, though, it has the downside of causing more write operations (since they can't be batched together into fewer, larger writes), so flash drives will wear out faster. I imagine Windows' behavior has the same problem, although with Windows users accustomed to pulling out their drives without unmounting, I suppose that's the lesser of two evils.